Hezbollah Fights Alongside LAF Demonstrating its Continuing Control over Lebanon

Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are fighting side by side against ISIS in northeastern Lebanon, further demonstrating the control the Iranian-backed terror group exerts over its host country.

Though some public statements denied that the two forces were coordinating their efforts, Reuters reported that one commander representing the forces involved in the fighting said that "naturally" there was coordination.

Last month, the Long War Journal reported that Hezbollah and LAF were involved in joint operations fighting ISIS in the area surrounding the Lebanese town of Arsal.

Specifically, the Long War Journal reported, "Lebanese troops are said to be positioned on the outskirts of Arsal to prevent the flow of jihadists into the city. The Shiite forces appear to be undertaking the brunt of the military operation.”

A week later, a reporter for The Washington Postobserved that in areas that had been taken over by Hezbollah "nowhere was there any evidence of the Lebanese state."

The new joint operation between Hezbollah and the LAF comes just after the United States delivered M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the LAF. In addition, Tony Badran reported that U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard said that the U.S. had delivered heavy weapons, M4 rifles, and night vision goggles to the LAF.

Badran, a research fellow specializing in Lebanon at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, observed that the items the U.S. delivered to the LAF "as it happens, these precise items have been on Hezbollah’s shopping list consistently for almost a decade.”

Barcelona’s Chief Rabbi Meir Bar-Hen has urged Jews to move to Israel following the terrorist attacks in Spain on Thursday, calling the country a “hub of Islamist terror for all of Europe” and “a lost place,” The Jerusalem Postreported Friday.

Emphasizing that his comments were made in a private capacity and not on behalf of the Jewish community in Barcelona, Bar-Hen identified radical Islam and the reluctance of authorities to confront it as part of the problem.

The “radical fringe” of Muslims, the terrorists and their supporters, are “living among us,” he said, warning that “it’s very difficult to get rid of them. They only get stronger.” Bar-Hen added that the problem was not limited to Spain, but had spread across the continent. “Europe is lost,” the rabbi asserted.

Bar-Hen also criticized Spanish authorities and politicians for failing to understand the nature of the Islamist threat. He cited the government’s decision in April to allow Leila Khaled, a Palestinian terrorist convicted for her role in the hijacking of an airplane in 1969, to enter the country for a book festival. This is proof that the authorities “do not understand the nature of terrorism, if they treat it as an action by the disenfranchised,” the rabbi concluded.

Displaying a more confident attitude than Bar-Hen, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain said in a statement that they had “full confidence in security forces who work daily to prevent fanatics and radical Muslims from inflicting pain and chaos on our cities.”

Weapons Experts: IAEA Needs Full Access to Parchin for Understanding of Iran’s Nuclear Work

In order to gain a full understanding of Iran's nuclear weapons program the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs full access to Iran's Parchin military installation, two experts on nuclear weapons wrote in a paper published Monday.

David Albright, a former weapons inspector and currently president of the Institute for Science and International Security, Olli Heinonen, former deputy of the IAEA, and three others wrote in a paper, that the IAEA has inadequate means to investigate possible Iranian violations of the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The problem, according to the paper, is that the arrangement made for investigating Parchin, a military site where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear weapons research, "established inadequate rules for on-the-ground investigation and environmental sampling about alleged nuclear weapons-related high explosive work at this Parchin site."

The IAEA discovered two particles of uranium in its investigation of Parchin, which the Obama administration later acknowledged was likely an indication of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and, which, according to the paper, "should have been a 'red-flag' necessitating further follow-up investigation."

Because the IAEA was unable to follow-up its investigation of Parchin, "the IAEA avoided drawing full conclusions about what occurred at the Parchin site, with the result being that the evidence of previous nuclear weapons research development and testing activity by Iran had effectively been swept under the rug, clearing the way for smooth passage of the JCPOA." This meant that "Iran’s strategy of denial, site modification, refusal of access, and obfuscation successfully worked to prevent the IAEA from making a clear determination."

The city of Buenos Aires honored Dr. Alejandro Roisentul, the Argentinean-born chairman of the Israeli Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, for his humanitarian work with Syrians wounded in the civil war raging across Israel’s northern border.

Roisentul, head of the maxillofacial surgery unit at Ziv Medical Center in Safed (Tzfat) about 40 miles from the Syrian border, has treated hundreds of the Syrians brought into Israel for medical care.

He graduated from the dental school of the University of Buenos Aires in 1986, three years before immigrating to Israel.

“Syrian injured people, even children, came to the border of Israel by foot in very bad condition. The IDF brought them to our hospital and we, the Israeli doctors, helped them,” Roisentul told Argentinean media.

“I have received people with serious injuries to their head and mouth, most of them can’t talk or eat correctly, and they return to Syria with a smile on their face. We also help them with clothes and sometimes they live for months in the hospital,” he said. “They looked at us as the enemy but after being taken care of in Israel they changed their views.”

“My dream is for the children of the Syrian wounded I treat to one day be able to play with my own children in peace,” said the 53-year-old father of three.

Since 2011, some 3,000 wounded Syrians have received free lifesaving medical treatment in Israeli hospitals, about half of them at Ziv.